11 YO NOONGAR HEAD BOY SILENCED BY DEPUTY PRINCIPAL
Bob Davis Junior and his Pop Trevor Davis
A young Noongar/Yamatji student has experienced a disappointing let-down to the end of the academic year as the elected Head Boy at his Perth school.
11-year old Robert Davis Junior had spent time over four weeks writing a graduation speech as head boy for Wednesday night this week but was told he would not be able to present his thoughts to the school.
Robert Jnr alleges the school’s Deputy Principal told him the speech was ‘all about him’ and he was directed to read another 4 line speech written for him.
Robert is the first-ever Noongar head boy of the school, and told Ngaarda Media he simply wanted to inspire his peers, saying he felt uncomfortable and sad about not being able to share his speech.
The bright young student told Ngaarda Media that the outcome was disappointing. “I went into my shell sort of thing. Yeah, it's a bit of a blow. I think if, I think I would have cried like a baby, you know, you put all that work in.”
Robert Jnr’s speech is in fact very inclusive, and acknowledges other students and their teachers. throughout. The final paragraph reads as follows:
Now our new journey starts as we walk out of these gates into bigger gates and the key message I want to share with you all, is that noting is worthwhile if you don’t take risks. Nelson Mandela said there is no passion to be found playing small and settling for a life that’s less than what you are capable of living and Denzel Washington said I want to fall forward at least this way I’ll see what I’m going to hit, fall forward, this is what I mean. Michael Jordan missed more than 9000 shots, but they don’t talk about how many shots he missed they talk about how many shots he makes, fall forward. Adam Goodes won two Brownlow medals, two premierships, four time all Australian and a member of the Indigenous Team of the Century. That’s what they talk about and years to come you will succeed and another student will take my place to share Your story of winning. Fall Forward. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success, you’ve got to take risk. We will fail at some point in our lives, accept it, we will lose, we will embarrass ourselves. Keep falling forward, If you don’t fail you’re not even trying, Think about it. Thank you for making our last school years amazing, inspiring and challenging and now together lets fall forward to create our stories.
Bob Jnr’s grandfather, Trevor Davis was there to support his grandson on the night, and to deliver a welcome to country. Mr Davis told Ngaarda Media the family inspires their children and grandchildren to go forward and do the best they can.
Mr Davis said he was shocked and extremely disappointed for his grandson, saying “My father was put down, I was put down. Comes up to my son who had a beautiful education, now my grandson's up and I thought we started to move forward as Aboriginal people”.
The school that Mr Davis Jnr attends sent a statement on the 21 of December 2021 and said that there was a misunderstanding.
Principle Leanne Allen said the following:
“While the Head Boy and Head Girl were asked to write speeches for their Year 6 graduation event, the brief to the students was that they would then work together and use what they had each written to make one speech capturing the year that was for the Year 6 Class of 2021. While his speech was inspirational, it was a personal reflection of his whole journey through primary school and not representative of the class. The confusion may be because, up until a couple of years ago, the school used to hold a separate Year 6 assembly – where each student could speak about their own journey – in addition to a graduation event. However, there is now only a Year 6 graduation event, which is why the Head Boy and Head Girl are asked to prepare something together on behalf of all their classmates.
This was explained to the student but disappointingly he chose not to take part after that. The eight school councillors then worked together to prepare a speech on behalf of the Year 6 group for the event.
We pride ourselves on being culturally responsive at the school and I want all students to have a sense of belonging. We have a working group of Aboriginal parents and we are forming an advocacy group for the future. We employed two Aboriginal and Islander Education Officers this year and these positions are currently being advertised permanently for next year.”
